


Pipe Dreams

by apiphile



Category: Blackadder
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Leaper 182
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-07
Updated: 2010-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My eternal thanks to the crack betaing team of Marcia (llamaramauk), Ande (machineplay) and Derry (derryderrydown). Any mistakes, inaccuracies, typos and general failings will be blamed on my boyfriend for not researching well enough, instead.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Pipe Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leaper 182](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Leaper+182).



> My eternal thanks to the crack betaing team of Marcia (llamaramauk), Ande (machineplay) and Derry (derryderrydown). Any mistakes, inaccuracies, typos and general failings will be blamed on my boyfriend for not researching well enough, instead.

The fire in the grate popped, crackled, hissed, and made other bad gramophone noises as Kevin Darling hummed over a mountain of ration receipts, billeting bills and the General's personal letters. It would have been ghastly impolite to imply that Captain Darling's hum was a tuneless matter which succeeded in dangling between all known notes without ever actually contacting one. A gentleman would merely have noted that Darling's hum was a slavish recreation of the obscure "Sonata in B Minor Using Only The Harmonic Cousin of F# That I Have Just Discovered" which was composed in a private lunatic ward in 1898 by an anonymous in-patient.

 

Had Captain E. Blackadder been on hand he would doubtless have been moved to make some _supposedly_ witty jibe about Kevin's tunelessness, but Blackadder - Darling thought with no small measure of satisfaction as he corrected a spelling on one of the man's sloppy reports - was back in his muddy hole failing to keep his privates in line. Whereas _Darling_, having superior intellect and tactical abilities and having come third-top in his class at spelling, was doing the important work at HQ, with no privates at all to bother him.

 

"Oh, Blackadder," he murmured aloud, "I before E except after C! _Wierd_, my unfortunate fellow, not _weird_!"

 

Had Darling been a pithier man (although as General Melchett himself had declared, Darling really could be quite pithy at times) he might have deemed Edmund Blackadder a self-made man who worshipped his creator, for this was certainly the case. Had he been a man of words as well as of letters he might have branded him oleaginous and manipulative, as he was indisputably both of these things in generous quantities. Had Captain Darling been an honest and introspective man he might have admitted that the unbearable Blackadder was better suited to life in the King's military than he, if only because Edmund had long since mastered the oft-ignored institutional arts of mumping, gold-bricking, loafing, lying through his teeth and petty bullying.

 

As things stood - or rather, _sat_ in a very comfortable sage-green chair with padded armrests - Darling had assigned Blackadder the private epithet `d---ed prick' (because Darling did not use strong language even in private) and routinely marked his entire company down for half-rations of tobacco.

 

It was baffling and unfair. The man's men loved him (Darling had a theory about that). The General - in the face of all evidence to the contrary - believed Blackadder to be a competent and promising captain (Darling had _no_ explanation for that) and, no matter what Darling did or said, Blackadder proved a thorn impossible to remove from his side.

* * *

 

Fortunately for Blackadder, Darling was not the kind of man given to making plans, not even to rid himself of Blackadder. Unfortunately for that unworthiest of captains, that professional coward and _inexplicable_ life-long bachelor, his orderly was precisely that kind of man. Though, to Baldrick's credit, those plans were ostensibly being made for Blackadder's benefit.

 

"You could pretend to be a horse," Baldrick offered helpfully. "I could sew together some sacks and put horsehair on them and then you could stand ... on a nail ... and then they'd take you away to the special horsey hospital in England and you could escape from _there_ disguised as one of them horse nurses."

 

"Baldrick," Blackadder said wearily, undoing his shirt collar to allow his sense of cosmic unfairness at the situation a little room to breathe, "_surely_ at some point in your sad, useless, intellectually stunted life _someone_ must have let you in on the hardly clandestine knowledge that the `special horsey hospital in England' is in fact the Arras Combined Meat Pie Packing Plant and Glue Factory. Aside from that relatively minor detail your plan is ... unexpectedly better than usual."

 

"That's hardly very likely, Captain Blackadder, sir," George scoffed. A smudge of misplaced boot polish marred his otherwise completely empty features. "What would a poorly horsey want with a meat pie?"

 

"... although I suppose it's hardly a surprise that our erstwhile Lieutenant would be just as ignorant of the darker facts of life," Blackadder muttered, patting his pockets and, perhaps predictably, coming up with no tobacco.

 

"Oh, I know all about _them_," Baldrick said dismissively. "The birds an' the bees an' the stork all pulling the little Baby Boatman's boat up the magic river to leave the little babies in ladies' tummies."

 

"How does the baby get _in_ there, though?" George gave Baldrick the especially dim look that he typically wore when being furnished with new information. It could persist for anything up to three days, by which time he had invariably forgotten what it was he was trying to absorb anyway.

 

"It always amazes me that the aristocracy ever manage to breed at all," Blackadder grimaced. "I can theorize that the lower orders must rely on base instinct, although I fear no instinct will ever be quite base enough to allow Baldrick to reproduce and he may have to remain mercifully _heirless_." He got up and pointed at the offending creature, recondite within a scarf so crusty that it might have been mistaken for a loaf of bread but for the smell, "And don't say anything about hair restorer either. Your line ends with _you_, Baldrick, which is sad news for me but a matter of some thrilling urgency for my inevitable scion. Give me your tobacco."

 

"But - "

 

"Give me your tobacco, Baldrick, I'm confiscating it as a result of your continued flouting of uniform regulations, but really because I want a bloody cigarette," Blackadder snarled, waving his open hand palm-up as close to Baldrick as he dared put it without acquiring more lice.

 

Baldrick produced a pathetic little bundle from inside his derelict uniform and regarded it sadly. He unwrapped the greasy oilcloth from the little thing and uncovered a slightly smaller bundle wrapped in newspapers so old that they were announcing the crowning of the queen. Inside _that_ lay a third bundle, which Baldrick handed to the captain with a gleam of a tear muddying the grime at the corner of his eye.

 

"I was saving that for the victory announcement," Baldrick said with just a touch of reproach.

 

Blackadder looked pained, but not even a little guilty. Other men might have felt a small twinge of regret at depriving the private of his last tobacco, but other men weren't Blackadder, and other men hadn't spent so long in the company of Private S. Baldrick's unique humours and hygiene. "Baldrick, by the time such a thing gets to us - _if_ one is ever made - you will have learnt how to cultivate tobacco in the grime between your toes _anyway_." He snatched up the precious bundle and produced cigarette papers from his hip pocket, straightening them on the table with the heel of his hand.

 

Lieutenant George and Baldrick peered hungrily at the nail-thin roll-up as it took shape, and sighed like love-sick schoolboys as Blackadder popped it safely behind his ear. "Think I'll have this one outside," he said, rising, "and see if I can't get myself captured and executed to avoid any further _inanity_ from you two."

 

"Sir!" Lieutenant George protested, "I really must - "

 

"Oh for Christ's sake, George," Blackadder groaned, hand already on the latch, "I don't _mean_ it. I wouldn't give that squit Darling the satisfaction, for one."

* * *

 

"DARLING!" The roar reverberated through the headquarters building like the belch and hiccup of the mercifully distant guns. As Captain K Darling was standing directly beside the General it was perhaps an unnecessary roar on Darling's account, but General Melchett was a true commander of men, and true commanders of men know that all non-confidential information must be disseminated at a deafening shout - for how else is morale to be kept up?

 

Darling twitched.

 

Other soldiers twitched and flinched and ducked at loud noises because they'd been tethered to positions in the trenches long past when sanity told them they ought to leave. Darling's predicament was perhaps less fraught with the possibility of shrapnel in the eye, but it was no less _loud_ or unpredictable.

 

"Yes, sir?"

 

"I've had the most marvellous idea," General Melchett frowned down at the jumpy little man. "Why are you wearing pyjamas, man?"

 

"It's three in the morning, sir."

 

General Melchett's moustache gave Darling a startled look. His face followed suit a moment later. "Is it? Is it? Is it, by Jingo? Well, genius knows no hour of the clock, and next time see to it that my cocoa is stronger, mm! Take this down."

 

"Take ... take what down, sir?" Darling asked faintly, trying to separate thoughts of home, hearth and having a full night's rest from the worrying reality of once again being pyjama-clad and barefoot in the General's bedroom.

 

"The idea I'm about to dictate to you, you blithering idiot!" General Melchett barked, going redder than usual with indignation. "Honestly, Darling, do keep up. Now - in order to raise the troops' morale - very important, that, Darling, take a note. We must keep them up. In order to keep the troops' morale up, they shall have ..."

 

"Extra rations?"

 

"Don't be ridiculous. In order to keep our brave lads from giving up hope on thrashing these pesky Hun, Darling, Sweethe - er - I shall authorize one commanding officer to ... mm ..."

 

"Hand out weapons that actually work?" Darling asked, his little notebook and stub of pencil at the ready.

 

"No! Don't keep _interrupting_, Darling." General Melchett stared off into the space beyond Darling's left ear, apparently composing his thought. Darling's nervous tic jumped miserably. He'd been having a perfectly happy dream in which Captain Blackadder was abducted by the Germans and lightly flogged by Darling's old school nurse, and now there was this, this waiting about on cold floors while General Melchett's moustache did some heavy-duty cogitation.

 

"_Baehr!_," the General exclaimed, making Darling jump. "A SHOW."

 

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

 

"A SHOW, DARLING! Clean your ears out - hygiene is a very important standard in the King's army, you know. We didn't win the American War by having dirty ears, now, did we?"

 

"No, because we _lost_ that one," Darling said under his breath, and immediately cursed himself. It appeared that Blackadder's appalling insubordination was contagious.

 

"A show, Darling," General Melchett said almost wistfully, "a show with juggling dogs and strangely hairy ladies and cockneys in brown trousers singing about eels. That's what we'll do."

* * *

 

_For an account of the intervening scenes, in which General Melchett encounters a delightful young lady, Captain Blackadder makes the acquaintance of a young man with a peculiarly squeaky voice and Baldrick makes the leap into showbiz with the help of a very talented invertebrate, please consult Messrs Curtis et al, episode "Major Star"._

* * *

 

Blackadder was preparing himself for a celebratory cigarette when the stage door swung open again. The spastic leaps of Captain Darling's cheek appeared around the doorjamb, along with the rest of his face, unwelcome as a genital lesion and about as attractive.

 

Darling pointed accusingly at the simpering and swooning Georgina. "That's Lieutenant George in a _dress_."

 

Blackadder gave him a practiced blank look and allowed sarcastic realization to dawn across it like a wave riding up a gentle beach. "My god, Darling. You may be right. However could it have escaped my notice like this?"

 

Darling's forefinger shook as Georgina made her exit, accompanied by an excited and babbling Bob. "You're letting General Melchett go to a dance - a _ball_ \- with _Lieutenant George_ in a _dress_ and a bad wig," he said in the doom-ridden tones of a modern Tiresias.

 

"I thought it was quite a good wig myself," Blackadder said about as sweetly as he ever said anything, licking the edge of a cigarette paper. "God only knows why George brought it with him."

 

"_Blackadder_," Darling said sharply, "you cannot allow the General to lose face like this."

 

"Actually, I think you'll find I can," Blackadder said cheerfully, "it's _your_ job to babysit the buffoon and clean his cane. I have my hands full enough keeping my privates in line." He smirked. "Still, if you fancy swapping over I'll take over polishing the General's knob and _you_ can come and get a handful of my privates."

 

Darling marched out without so much as a parting shot.

 

"I'm surprised he noticed at all," Blackadder said as Baldrick, unnoticed and ignored throughout the exchange, finished tucking his slug back into its case, "as I can't imagine Darling has seen that many girls himself." Blackadder stroked the side of his moneybox fondly, and added, "although evidently it's still more than the General has."

* * *

 

"My darling!" the General said, placing his hand over Georgina's in the crisp night air.

 

Lieutenant George looked nervously over General Melchett's large, manly shoulder. "... is he here too?"

 

"What?"

 

"Oh, uhm. Never mind." Lieutenant George - Georgina - found the giggle came naturally to his lips while he was in the dress. He supposed that was normal, or it had been that way back at Winchester - the minute you clambered into a frock for a rousing game of Bugger George Senseless (he'd always thought the name was something of a jolly amusing coincidence) you found yourself tittering and swooning like a right little miss.

 

"Tonight has been the happiest of my life," the General said rather abruptly, putting his arm awkwardly around Georgina's shoulders. George being quite a broad-shouldered chap it didn't _quite_ reach, but he supposed it was the thought that counted, a bit like Christmas presents, only you didn't really send a "thank you for taking me to a ball while dressed as a woman" cards afterward. Or if you _did_, he hadn't seen them stocked in Selfridge's, which posed the worrying question of where one was meant to go to get them.

 

"Oh mine _too_, General Melchett - " he said a little untruthfully: he'd been happier when Mummy let him move out of the nursery, for example, or when Blodger Beater-Crispin had scored the winning try in their boys versus masters game. Or even just last week when Captain Blackadder had recanted the opinion that George was the stupidest human ever to have issued from a woman's womb after being presented with a signed affidavit from three doctors who all declared Baldrick _Homo sapiens_ and not, as Blackadder had claimed to suspect, a very large _Rattus rattus_. George _had_ had happier moments, some of them even in company, but on the whole there was champers and music and some rather smashing moustaches and no one had grabbed his bottom, so it was certainly _all right_.

 

"In fact the only thing that could make this evening happier for me is if you were to - oh, _Chipmunk_ \- if you were to accept this - " General Melchett looked slightly flustered and corrected himself, "if you were to let me ... dash it ... please don't think me forward - "

 

"Yes?" Georgina asked hesitantly, leaning forwards, diamante gleaming in her glossy-haired décolletage in the candlelight.

* * *

 

At HQ, Darling briefly considered accidentally "losing" Captain Blackadder's wages chit. It would be the work of a minute - the pleasure of a minute, really - to accidentally make it into a paper dart and fling it into the nice toasty paper-consuming fire.

 

Darling had never been any good at paper darts at school. He darkly suspected that Blackadder probably had been.

 

Beside him, the General's private line to Field-Marshall Haig began to ring.

* * *

 

Back at the Front, Captain Blackadder hit Baldrick on the crown of his head with a tin mug and demanded a cup of tea that didn't taste so much of rat droppings.

 

"London, here I come," he said with a satisfied smirk as Baldrick wandered woozily away, and put his feet up on the table. This was one of this better plans, he had to admit - his presence in London would be entirely justified, entirely legal, and entirely monied. Perhaps hanging around with George in his (disturbingly attractive) frock and Baldrick with a trail of congealed slime on his upper lip (which was hard to distinguish under the grime) would get galling very quickly, but he'd spent two years in the sodding muddy hole with them so far and despite temptation had _not_ stuck his own service revolver in his ear. In London it would be even more bearable.

 

There would be women who weren't _French_, for a start.

* * *

 

" ... a kiss?" General Melchett concluded, colouring.

 

Georgina sighed very prettily and said, "Oh _Melchie_, I thought this moment would never come!"

 

The kiss itself was unspectacular - George had, for various reasons, felt the whiskers of many a grand gentleman against his youthful face - chaste, and not so long as to be indecent. It was the kind of kiss that could slip gracefully past the motion picture censors and make old ladies swoon and smile rather than tut and scowl.

 

George had been expecting a little more than that.

 

"Oh, _General_."

 

"If only," General Melchett said wistfully, "I didn't have to organise this bally Last Push for Haig." His moustache gave a twitch which was, though he could not know it, the same frequency and intensity of twitch as Darling's not-shell-shock tic. "He means it this time, you know. All troops over the top! What fun!" He took Georgina's hand in his. "I shall be sorry to miss it."


End file.
